Ubisoft blames 'technical error' for showing pop-up ads in Assassin's Creed
theverge.com
theverge.com
HR departments do the same thing. Cut or drastically change a benefit; there's an uproar, management "listens" and a few days later announces a revised policy which is still a cut, and the level which they'd planned all along, but now people feel like they had some say in it.
https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3jjb2f/if_you_...
Their CEO literally used the words "we have listened" after the uproar.
https://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2015/09/03/pr_030915/
https://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2015/09/18/final-update-on-t...
Let's say you're a mayor who needs to increase the price of a public utility by 10%, what do you do? You announce that this price will be increased by 30%. People get furious, protests ensue (sometimes, it's even desirable if riots start) against such an outrageous increase! What to do? You should be as invisible as possible during this turbulent period and let others take all the heat, only to come out at the end announcing that yes, the people have spoken, and as a result the increase will be limited to 10%. Now, the people are happy; it's democracy in action, they have the power! The mayor is happy; he's got his increase happen. Happy ending.
*Your link misses a 'g' of .org
I honestly don't know which is more damaging but it's the ole 1-2 of company death. Luckily when managers then backfill the holes left by the top-N and things "keep working" they pat themselves on the back and say "see they weren't so important after all!" And then get perplexed when things are going slower at a macro level because everyone is sad and either literally or mentally out the door.
There's a big gap between full-productivity and a fireable work ethic.
This is just what always on connectivity does to the media.
https://screenrant.com/burnout-paradise-2008-release-obama-p...
[1] https://www.engadget.com/2009-11-19-wipeout-hd-in-game-ads-r...
yeah it changes the impact.
That’s obviously false
Gatcha makes companies a disproportionately large amount of money so they produce more of them.
Gatcha mechanics are in nearly every modern game.
Most games people play are gatcha games.
The most popular games now are cs:go and cs2 both gatcha games.
It's an industry standard to have some sort of gambling with real world money for extraction and all gatcha games are used as a funnel for this extraction, therefore I don't see a reason to distinguish them. There isn't a 'fun first' gatcha game, since they're designed to make you buy at the core of their existence.
Both are bad but one is far worse.
> Genshin Impact that have literally no accessible gameplay without constantly feeding money into the machine
is completely false. By even a conservative estimate 80% of the game can be played for free. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find a worse example to try to make your point.
I would disagree, given how the major sports franchise games and multiplayer FPS games use gacha mechanics too.
The normal in app purchase trap is time saving bonuses as far as I can see
The first type are, indeed, not easy to churn out (at least no easier than any other game). The second, though, are the sort that most third-year CS students could make in a few days of concentrated effort, and individual companies often make many, many games that are basically the same but with different assets. They're then sold with misleading ads in the hopes that a few whales will get addicted. The cost to produce them is so low that even single digits of whales buying lots of in-app-purchases can result in profit.
(There's also a third category: terrible games with a license to beloved franchises, with E.T. being the canonical example. Many of them are microtransaction hell, but more often they take advantage of the brand to sell them for an up-front price. Same strategy, though: minimize production values, market as aggressively as possible within budget, accept a relatively low return which is still net-profitable.)
It seems unlikely that you’re going to have people whaling for rare drops in a trash game with no social network. Whaling is often a status thing and benefits from network effects.
I played some Nintendo’s / Cygames gacha from a while back and its revenue numbers were pretty middling despite being pretty darn high end. Are people really making money on games that are just barely serviceable with no fan base but a slot machine in them? I find that hard to square.
No they're not - if you include mobile games, sure but they're not really the same thing as PC/Console games. It's good to criticize this stuff but the hn crowd seems to go into full moral panic mode when discussing video games.
It's really easy to find hundreds of really good games that don't have predatory microtransactions, just download steam and pay attention to reviews.
I work in the games industry, and this just isn’t true.
Where are you getting your information from?
Some aren’t gatcha but most are.
It's simple: there are games and gacha. Mobiles mostly don't have games, only gacha.
Take your least favorite politician. They probably say they're the saviour of the nation. Do you call them that just because that's what they call themselves?
Why accept that for free to play stuff?
gacha platforms were designed from the ground up to extract cash, and were then gussied up to look like a game.
As far as I know poker has been played for money for hundreds of years?
I assume this would actually not work out that well since games go on sale so soon.. so it will probably end up being the case for a streaming service like PS NOW or whatever.
Personally I wouldn't even bother because such games were probably overtaken by marketing and sales and wouldn't be worth playing even for free.
This is the same Ubisoft that recently tried altering the deal with developers. They are exploring new revenue streams, and I think this is just a preview of what is to come everywhere.
What will stop them from doing that will be the success of selling the game for $60-$70 with ads and a premium version without ads for $90-$100.
Mobile is another story. There's so much crap shovelware out there with ads that you can almost forget the idea of a free game anymore. Video ads can run minutes in length or even be playable demos of other games, usually with the same braindead mechanic as the rest.
Steve Jobs was right, don't give your kid an ipad.
Soulsbornes are fine. CD Projekt is fine.